There are still some places on this earth
where, driving into the hills just ten miles
from the nearest town, if you killed
the engine and turned off the headlights
you would find yourself at the bottom
of a well of darkness. Perhaps it is too late
or you don’t realize I hadn’t planned
on coming this far down the road,
but here we are. We could have taken
the other exit, the one littered with rest
stops, vending machines dispensing packets
of sugared goods all day and night, glass
vaults offering the sliver of a chance to lift
a cheap stuffed animal out of the felted pile—
But whether or not you really meant to sign
on for this ride, we’re too far inland now.
Cell phone signals come through only
intermittently, and on this stretch the houses
are three or four miles apart. Who’ll break
the silence first? Back there, I saw a painted shingle
that said to watch for deer crossing. Even in this
desolation, so many signs of life, as though they
didn’t require our noticing. If we sat here
through the last icy hours of night, we might see
at first light, juncos on the snow between
the cattails. Or Dürer’s young hare, soft brown
in watercolor and gouache, still for a moment
before disappearing in the grass.
With all my heart oh how I wish he
would take all the darkness with him.
—Luisa A. Igloria
01.20.2011
In response to today’s Morning Porch entry.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Stay
- “Findings”: the missing Morning Porch poems
- Two more Morning Porch poems from Luisa Igloria and a comment on free culture
- What Leaf
- With winter’s gift of unimpeded sight,
- Aubade, with Feathers
- Scherenschnitte
- Solstice
- Heart and Shadow
- “The sudden spasm of wings”
- “Before sight, sound—“
- Four Morning Porch poems
- “Up and down the street, the neighbors…”
- Memento Mori
- “The streets are lined with garbage bins…”
- “Soon the old year must join…”
- Speaking of __
- “For the sun’s approximate blaze…”
- Postcard
- Wake
- Despedida de Soltera
- Filament
- “Paired or unpaired, all in the world…”
- Vertices
- Private: Quicksilver
- Graupel
- Auguries
- Closer
- Menage
- Private: Preludium
- Instructions
- Consonance
- Rosary
- Forager
- Photogram
- [poem temporarily hidden by author]
- Ghazal of the Dark Water
- Landscape, With Darkness and Hare
- Landscape, with Cardinal and Earring
- Intention
- One Day, That Room
- Landscape, with Small Flakes and Far-off Bandoneón
- Sentence
- Spun
- Intercession
- Recurrence
- Private: Matins
- Landscape, with an End and a Beginning
- Waking
- Thaw
- Spell
- Dim Sun, Dim Sum
- Vanishing Point
- Ghazal of the Open Water
- Monday Landscape, with Clocks Borrowed from Dali
- “Last night’s wet snow…”
- Ephemera
- Landscape, with Water Fountain, Small Clouds and Endless Lyric
- What She Wants
- Landscape, with Mockingbird and Ripe Figs
- Letter to Arrythmia
- Love Poem with Skull and Candy Valentines
- Private: To Flower
- Landscape, with Fake Butterflies and Sick Child
- Letter to Affliction
- Letter to Levity
- Thaw
- Private: Little Girding Song
- Letter to Rubbermaid and Tupperware
- Letter to Spam
- Ellipsis
- Nave
- Little Waking Song
- Imminence
- Private: Ghazal of Wild Things
These poems of Luisa’s are an embarrassment of riches, something overwhelming about having such wonders tumbling out in such abundance every time one comes here. Please don’t take the lack of comments as lack of appreciation, rather the opposite.
Are there any plans to put them into book form, with the MP entries that prompted them?
Lucy, thank you for your kind words. They’re a little blaze to cup in my hands today. x Luisa